Jim Lewis wrote:

snip

This, too, you can blame on the *&^%$# Puritans that you
folks
sent us back in the mid to late 1500s and into the 1600s (I'm
sure you sent them over because you saw what narrow, bigoted
B-----ds they were and wanted no part of them.) :-/ The
Puritans are to blame for much that is wrong in our society
today -- including "Compassionate Conservatism."


Hey--these are my ancestors you're dissing. Don't forget they
also laid the
foundations for modern democracy and higher education on this
continent. Awful
people.


Well, one can't pick one's ancestors. We just have to live with
them (or their legacy).

However, the American version of Democracy, at least, came from
another -- much more liberal (in the 16th century Renaissance
sense) -- school of thought much further south than Massachusetts
Bay Colony -- where the First Amendment would _never_ have come
up for discussion ;-).

Jim Lewis - - Tallahassee, FL - Our life is
frittered away by detail . . . . Simplify! Simplify. -- Henry
David Thoreau - Walden

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